For the last year or so, poet/tech sorceress Sanya Khurana and I (Annie Finch) have been developing the meter app Poetcraft. Poetcraft will include the first AI in the world able to scan and teach a range of different English meters. I am deeply excited about this project, which aims to move the English language back towards the core human magic of metrical diversity and, to my mind, nudge the world onto a more sustainable, joyful path.

Poetcraft will be trained on 4000 scanned lines of poetry, 1000 in each of four different meters. We have now finished collecting these lines, and we are seeking people who love meter and have experience with scanning to help bring the app to the next step as volunteer Scanners. All scansions will use the classic system of scansion introduced in my workbook How to Scan a Poem and in my classes and online videos. They will use the following symbols: wands, cups, edges, and–as needed—half-wands, ghost cups, and rests.

I am excited about this project and hope you might want to be part of it as a volunteer Scanner.

Q AND A

How will the process work?

Scanners will choose a poem from the project’s Google Drive and scan it on a computer using standard keyboard techniques (forward slash and backslash for wands and half-wands, lower case u for a cup, hashtag for a rest). After saving the scanned version on the Drive, you will mark the poem as scanned on an Excel sheet. That’s it!

How many poems will each scanner need to scan?

As many as you like. We expect each scanner to scan, on average,100-500 lines.

Will I have any support?

Each scanner will be given access to a “cheat sheet” created by me that summarizes the method of scanning used in the project and the use of each of the 6 symbols, and also suggests simple hacks to help you scan faster and more efficiently—and will also soon have access to a brief video going over the same material.

How good will I need to be at scansion to participate?

You should be an experienced scanner, but you don’t need to be a complete expert.

As you go, you will find that the experience of scanning many poems will raise your skills to another level.

What if I get stuck and can’t figure out how to scan a line or passage?

If you get stuck, leave the line unscanned and type a note next to it saying COULDN’T SCAN. All scansions will be doublechecked by an expert scanner, and finally triple-checked by me personally, so we will catch it.  

What is the timeframe?

You can start anytime. We hope to finish most of the scansions during the spring and to wind up no later than July 1.

Is there any compensation?

As a gesture of gratitude, all scanners will be offered six months free use of the Poetcraft app (value of projected cost is $99/month).  We will also be proud to list the names of all Scanners on the Poetcraft website (if you prefer not to be listed, just let us know).

I’m in! What’s the next step?

Please email us at scansions@poetcraft.org stating your interest, and we will get you started!

Talk to Me About…

Talk to me about hope

because I see too many without it.

Talk to me about emotional pain

because it has taken the place of joy.

Talk to me about hate

because it has become too easy to spew.

Talk to me about our children

because what they are learning is unhealthy.

Talk to me about war

Because the innocent suffer the most.

Talk to me about truth

Because I have heard so many lies.

Talk to me about change

because without it we can not evolve.

Talk to me about life

because we are seeing too much death.

Talk to me about loving one another…

Because it is the one thing that can change

all of those other things I want to talk about.

***

Burn Me

Burn Me! Burn me with your touch

The pain reminds me I am still alive

Suffocate me with you Kiss

It is a sweet death and worth the cost

Cut through me with your gaze

So you can see me for who I am

Take away my memory of anyone before you

No memory is more beautiful than yours

Blind me from seeing the future

My dreams are all that I want to see

Bury me with your love

For only Heaven can compete with it.

***

Love

No monetary value can be placed on love

And with love, even a heathen can change his life

What love puts together can not be shaken 

and it is only through love that all good things come

In this life, things are given and taken away

and in the end, riches will mean nothing…

Only Love will remain

Kristy Ann Raines is an American poet and author born, Kristy Ann Rasmussen, in Oakland California, In the United States of America.  

She is an accomplished, International Poet and Writer.  Kristy has two self-published books on Amazon titled, “The Passion Within Me”, and  an anthology with a prominent poet from India, Dr. Prasana Kumar Dalai, titled, “I Cross My Heart from East to West.”

She has one children’s book coming out soon, titled, “Tishya the Dragon”, and a few other Children’s Stories to follow. Kristy is also working on finishing two very special books that have been in the works for a few years titled, “Rings, Things and Butterfly Wings” and “Princess and The Lion”.

Her biography and a collection of thoughts on her life called, “My Very Anomalous Life”, will be the last to publish. 

Kristy has received many awards for her unique writing style and also for her work as an Activist and Humanitarian around the world.

Kristy also enjoys painting, making pottery, writing song lyrics, and being with her family.  She is married, has two wonderful children, and is a proud Grandmother of three beautiful Granddaughters with one Great Grandchild on the way! 

My mother

Eyes that saw the test of life

Meaningful, meaningful words

Her hair that has been damaged by the night

But his heart is the sun, he sheds no tears

One day the dream will come true

The waters of the spring are crashing,

Then sing the nightingale, sing your best

All the flowers are scattered in it

Trees lead the way to the goal

My mother goes to Makka with smiling faces

Bibikhanifa Jumanazarova, daughter of O’ktam, was born on May 15, 2007 in Zomin district of Jizzakh region. She has more than 50 international certificates. Her articles have been published in different countries. She has a B2 certificate in English. She is currently a 11th grade student.

Examine a close reading of Excerpts from Amar Jiban with textual references and critical perspectives.

The bildungsroman heroine’s feminism and womanhood distinctly enlightens revolutionary iconoclasticism in this canonical colonial third world cosmos reechoing resonances foreshadowed by the lion of literary and social London, Mary Wollstonecraft’s polemical treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Unladylike pursuits overwhelms diabolical fretters of patriarchy and misogyny into obscuration and oblivion through overarching radical free thinking intellectualism pioneered by the foundational wave of feminism and advocacy of womens’ rights movement. Dethroning the quintessence of manhood from the legacy of thronedom and the exilic banishment of masculinity creeps as gothic macabre to androgynous imperialism. Commodification of women as reproductive machinery is the penultimate masculinist subjectivity of the object of male gaze, viewing womanhood and femininity through the polarizing lens of fetishization and/or voyeurism.

Manhood cannot penetrate into the kingdom of womanhood being a stingless bee drudge and thus cease into the brink of annihilation. As a cornerstone and milestone of women writing, autobiographical excerpts from Amar Jiban, chronicles the opportunity of education; ushering emancipation and liberation of femininity and womanhood from being entangled and mired by subservience and servitude within the hearths and parlours of the domesticity and/or domicile. Responsibilities and obligations ought to be performed as a coalition of egalitarian fraternity and gendered pluralistic solidarity. Women possess their freedom and liberty vis a-vis men and thus the otherization of gender stereotyping shouldn’t relegate them through subjugation and subordination, subservience, servitude and servility.

Entitlement to their feminist identity bears testimony of individuality which must be preserved even after wifedom and maternity. Stagnation of a conservative microcosmic milieu inextricably, nonetheless handicaps this female empowerment phenomenon into the quagmire of dormancy. Bolstering economic independence of training female workforce and contraceptive pills for preventive birth control measure policies in case of incessant bondage of child-bearing were to be fought in the then contemporary reactionary revolution.

Oftentimes women are perennially perpetrated into the rigidities of flesh trade for the sustenance of her soul as relevant still today. Overwork from overtime work at night and wage inequality underpay status quo exacerbate inhumane working conditions chilled by cold and exhausted by heat, subjected to the perils of unguarded machineries and poisonous fumes. Then the leisure and pleasure of married life’s housekeeping and homemaking, unfortunately strikes catastrophic consequences of fatalistic dowry and/or widowhood.

Advancing intellectual professionalism of females visavis the progressive career orientated educated males is inevitable for the companionship furthering continuity of the human race. Observant and sensible daughters, affectionate and empathetic sisters, faithful and chaste wives and reasonable and tenderhearted mothers idolizes womanhood and femininity which the author lionized through the characters and settings of her novel that alludes to Vindication of the Rights of Women: idiolect of feminism: “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves” and “it is not empires, but equality and friendship which women want” through exerting womanliness in context of truth, freedom, education, wealth, experience and knowledge of life.

“One of the philosophizing serpents that we have in our bosom” and “hyena in petticoats” alludes to the then contemporary anti feminist perspectives in view of gynocentric transgressions. However, holistic betterment of mankind essentializes the vis a-vis coexistence of manhood and womanhood as an egalitarian ethos and thus womanliness is not enmeshed within subjection of objectivity and fragmentation of selfhood. Material, financial, intellectual and emotional bursaries prolifically transform feminine empowered individuals to prosper and progress whether the public discourse of political philosophy or the private discourse of domesticity.

Rassundari Devi’s prose narrative is the embodiment of persistently tenacious girlhood, maidenhood, womanhood transcending the recalcitrant barriers of patriarchy’s misogynist locked room adversities. Her bold rage and fiery temper are shrewd and poignant to subvert the enslavement of housewives as reflected in these rhetorics: “Is this my fate because I am a woman? … Just because I am a woman does it necessarily mean that trying to educate myself is a crime?” To Rassundari Devi’s histrionic protest, bondage and imprisonment forthrightly laments powerlessness and captivity of womankind.

Misfortunes of widowhood furthermore exacerbates the drudgery of existentialism in case of women like her as vindictive in the prolific denunciation of widowhood: “Toward the end of my life I have been widowed. I feel ashamed and hurt by the realization that even if a woman has lived her life fully, has brought up her children and lives behind her sons and daughters to carry on, her widowhood is still considered a misfortune.” Rassundari Devi inexplicitly abolishes conservative widowhood custom to eradicate funebrial crisis associated with survival instincts of women’s individuality.

Predicament of womenfolk always coerces womankind and relegates them to the status of a caged bird or fish caught in a net. The protagonist is grief stricken and frozen hearted as epitomized by the state of an elegiac plaintiff; who has been engulfed by the blazing forest until Lord of the Heavens’ celestial grace bestows “womenfolk to get together and study books”.

Further Reading, References and Endnotes

Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban: Challenging the Norms, Dr. Ritambhara, Notions, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 1-6

Feminism and the Economic Independence of Woman, Guoin Griffis Johnson, The Journal of Social Forces, May 1925, Volume. 3, No. 4, pp. 612-616, Oxford Journals.

Chapter Title: Introduction to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1891 New edition, London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 2-30, Book Title: Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Book Subtitle: Selected writings, Book Editor(s): Melissa Terras, Elizabeth Crawford, Published by: UCL Press. (2022)

Chapter Title: Style as Noise: Identity and Ideology in A Vindication of the Rights of

Woman, Book Title: Feminist Theory, Women’s Writing, Book Author(s): Laurie A. Finke

,Published by: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-41.

Reconceptualizing Gender, Phule, Brahminism and Brahminical Patriarchy, Uma Chakravarti

Rassundari Devi Amar Jiban pp. 1-13

https://ananenglishliterature.wordpress.com/…/rassunda…/

Let Me Relish the Drizzle, the Dude

I get the feeling that every once in a while

You drum up something special just for me,

Whether mundane or whether a minor miracle.

I’m scorching in the field, raking and weeding,

Blinded in buckets of my own sweat. Tired.

Out of nowhere, a cooling drizzle blows in.

I’m helping a friend move a clunky armoire,

And we can’t heft the damn thing into the truck.

Then a biker dude pops out of the hedges to assist.

Is this from You for me? Or am I making it up?

Am I so desperate to find a hint anywhere

Of kin and kindness to ease my aloneness?

However You work, let me think my pleasure.

Let me delude and amuse myself. Let me relish

The drizzle, the dude, and smother You in thanks.

Into Your Folds

There’s a song You sang as a bird flew near.

She heard it and plummeted into Your folds,

Never to be seen again.

Please, can You start over? Repeat it just once?

I only caught the first faint notes,

And am circling back.

World, hush – all thoughts, loves, woes, worries.

I drift into the winds of silence.

There! It begins again.

Delicate chimes strike high above a hum of hope.

The tones beckon, entice, captivate.

I must get closer.

Not All Your Answers

Ill at ease, squirmy,

Sick to my stomach,

Heave-ho.

Anything for relief –

But no, it’s You, Lord,

Replying.

Not all Your answers

Come dripping in joy.

So be it.

A clap of thunder –

A horse rears and bolts.

I hold.

A Trail of Suitcases

I find a trail of suitcases

Stretches out behind me.

Each is broken and drips

Madness and mistakes.

I find my clenched hands

Hefting two new suitcases

Heavy with my sad stories,

Packed full with tragedy.

I find my fingers weaken

And loosen and intertwine.

The suitcases fall away,

Bang, crack, and splinter.

I find my hands reach up

In a prayer for the end

Of all suitcases, trunks,

Storage sheds, and attics.

I find I stand up straight;

I stop staring at sidewalks

And see the clarity of sky.

I find that I beg for love.

Sky Diving Full Naked

I can only relax,

I can only unwind,

I can only laugh,

When I know I’m giving everything.

My seconds to You, Lord,

My days to You, Lord,

My life to You, Lord,

When I know I’m begging for more.

Sky diving full naked,

Topping the Alps full naked,

Sitting silent full naked,

When I know I’m blasting beyond.

Now I do anything,

Now I walk anywhere,

Now I greet anyone,

When I know I’m all of me for You.

DK Jammin’ is 73 years old and lives in Colorado. He graduated from Yale University with a law degree, raised a daughter, and worked at the Texas Legislative Council in Austin. He is the supervisor of the Words Department for the Center of The Golden One. 

His poetry publishing credits include: “The Coffee Maker” in Macrame Literary Journal, “A Landing” and “A Fly Comes Your Way” in The Accendo Review, “As I Imagine” in Soul Poetry, “She Sails Our World” in Metapsychosis Journal, and “Goddess of My Inner Joy” was published in the Men’s Poetry Journal, “Enkidu.” He has been a playwright, lawyer, and a psychotherapist, but recently he has been inhabited with the muse of poetry and cannot stop writing.

As Travis Chi Wing Lau says, Noelia Cerna writes with care about even the smaller bits of our existences in her new collection Las Piedrecitas (Pebbles). In this collection, it is those “pebbles ”that make up a full life, where a person can not only survive, but thrive.

Music emerges as a motif, from a father’s Spanish guitar to Latino pop tunes in a restaurant kitchen. The pieces have a kind of internal musicality to them, expressed through rhythm, word choice, and the placement of text on the page.

Food and drink serve as expressions of nourishment offered by family and heritage. But they also become a way to poke fun at arrogant tourists who won’t listen to local wisdom “Tourism and Soda” and a commentary on people who enjoy Latino cultural offerings but don’t treat Latino people with respect “Taco Tuesday.”  

Las Piedrecitas celebrates and honors many women with whom Cerna feels a connection. Maria, an immigrant janitor, Karen, an older woman with intense confidence and presence, and her own mother, Alna,in the joint poem “A Kyrie for Dreams.”

Fathers and fatherhood come up several times in Las Piedrecitas. Cerna pays tribute to hardworking and loyal dads “An Ode to Brown Fathers.”

In the title poem, the speaker’s father gently plays with her in a park while staying vigilant against any stranger with ill intentions.

He protects his family from political violence in Nicaragua by immigrating to the United States and later teaches her not only boxing, but internal strength and perseverance. She uses that strength to navigate life as an immigrant and an abuse survivor, but also, poignantly, to separate from him and find her own way in the world, as in “Moving Away” and “Estrangement in Three Steps.” As pointed out in the last few lines of the title poem, the statues in the park see a larger world beyond his current imagination.  

Learning to love oneself and live on one’s own terms is a major theme in Las Piedrecitas. That can mean vowing not to run from love because of religiously based homophobia “Theaters in the Fall” or accepting one’s righteous anger at explicit and implicit racist and anti-immigrant sentiment “When my white colleague calls me angry” or reclaiming the narrative around past sexual abuse “Sugar.”

Yet, charting their own destiny does not leave the narrator rootless. Las Piedrecitas contains many images of sturdy objects planted in the soil: stone statues in Nicaragua, to which she returns as an adult, and trees with solid trunks and roots deep in the dirt.

Religion is another aspect of the narrator’s roots and heritage. Cerna draws on the language of faith to assert the dignity and value of her body, her loved ones, and her homeland, as we see in “Volcano,” “Holy” and “Cathedral.” Yet, she also subverts the language of faith to tell her own story of personal growth, as in “Most Holy,” where she reaches the point of spiritual maturity where she can reject judgement and abuse from those who misuse religion to hold onto power.

Religion can be beautiful and can ground you in something deep and beyond yourself, but it can also be a source of trauma and danger. By using religious metaphors for romantic love, Cerna extends that dual nature to romance. We see intimate partner abuse in a few pieces: “Estrangement in Three Steps” and Advice To My College Self” and men’s sexist treatment of women in “Rust” and the cowardly abandonment of a partner in “Ghoster.”

Cerna’s narrator has survived much. Like the tree by the overpass in one of her later poems, she asserts through her writing that she is more than a “survivor” but a person living a full and complete life.

Noelia Cerna’s Las Piedrecitas can be ordered here from Black Lawrence Press.

Noelia Cerna is a Latina poet based in Springdale, AR. She was born in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States at the age of seven where she received a Bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. Her poems have been published in audio form in Terse. Journal and in print in the The Revolution [Relaunch], the Girl Gang blog, the Plants and Poetry Journal and The North Meridian Review. Noelia is a book editor for the North Meridian Review and an award winning writing mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Mentorship program.

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